Many types of commercial software are internationalized so that they can be easily used by users of different countries who may speak different languages or different dialects of different languages. Such software goes through a localization process, in which the user interface and other aspects of the software are customized to the user's local environment, or source locale. For instance, the user interface may be display in the local language of the user, and error logs may also be generated in this local language.
Localization, however, becomes problematic when the software generates an error log that is particular to a source locale, such as a language, that is not understood by support personnel responsible for fixing the errors that resulting in the error log. The support personnel may attempt to reproduce the errors in a version of the software that is particular to the support personnel's source locale. However, many types of errors result from the particular environment of the user, which means that the support personnel may not be able to reproduce the problem at a remote site.
The support personnel may also request that the user switch the source locale in which the software is running to that of the support personnel, and ask the user to attempt to reproduce the problem. However, this places an onerous burden on the user, since he or she has to modify the source locale of the software, and may have to modify the source locale of the entire computing system within which the software is running. Furthermore, the user him or herself may be unable to reproduce the problem.
As such, localization of software to the particular source locale of a user has become an issue for support personnel unfamiliar with the source locale in attempting to diagnose and fix errors that occur within the software. Where the error log is in a language that the support personnel do not understand, it may be difficult at best for the support personnel to diagnose and fix the errors that resulted in generation of the error log. For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.